The “No Slums in the Sunset” crowd is slumming it today, as their restraining order to stop an affordable housing project was thrown out — but they’re still suing the city to prevent the project at 26th Avenue and Irving Streets from getting built.
The above image of a proposed seven-story affordable housing complex in the Sunset District may look realistic, but the complex does yet exist. That image is a rendering that was just released this week, and SF YIMBY just picked up a bunch of new renderings of the proposed 91-unit, all-affordable complex that has generated tons of animosity from current Sunset residents.
Within a day of these lovely new renderings arriving, trouble arrived, too. A lawsuit from the Mid-Sunset Neighborhood Association, filed Wednesday according to the SF Business Times, sought a restraining order that would have suspended the project until the lawsuit was resolved. And while the lawsuit probably won’t be resolved for months, the Chronicle reports that a judge tossed out the restraining order that tried to stop the 2550 Irving project in its tracks.
So much hate in the Sunset towards this 100% affordable housing development from @TNDC. Other people suffering are not your enemy! This is vitally needed housing and we need to make sure this project doesn't get derailed. pic.twitter.com/waOTHOgGLX
— Jon Bate (@jonobate) January 17, 2021
You may recall the infamous “No Slums in the Sunset!” flyers that surfaced in January, which claimed that “In just two years, 2550 Irving Street will become the best place in San Francisco to buy Heroin!” The flyer added, “Stop Gordon Mar and his communist free homeless housing scheme!” and for good measure, “Impeach London Breed!!!”
Well, London Breed’s office is delighted with the ruling.
“This project needs to continue to go forward,” Breed’s spokesperson Jeff Cretan told the Chronicle. “Delaying housing through appeals or lawsuits means denying people homes. Our housing shortage requires all cities, including San Francisco, to push harder to build more, including in areas that haven’t seen as much housing built.”
It was back in July when the board of supervisors approved funding for a $14.7 million loan to acquire the former Police Credit Union site, for a project to be handled by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation. The Mid-Sunset Neighborhood Association has softened its total opposition and now wants to shrink the project from seven stories to four stories.
“We want the affordable housing. We want to welcome new neighbors, but the building proposed is too big,” the association’s president Flo Kimmerling told the Chron.
So the project can move forward, but the lawsuit can, too. And it probably will, considering the lawsuit’s GoFundMe campaign has raised nearly $14,000 to oppose the project as currently proposed.
